{"id":43571,"date":"2021-11-24T22:52:00","date_gmt":"2021-11-25T05:52:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.durangoherald.com\/tj\/update-head-on-crash-kills-driver-on-u-s-highway-491-north-of-cortez\/"},"modified":"2026-03-31T03:14:30","modified_gmt":"2026-03-31T09:14:30","slug":"update-head-on-crash-kills-driver-on-u-s-highway-491-north-of-cortez","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.durangoherald.com\/tj\/update-head-on-crash-kills-driver-on-u-s-highway-491-north-of-cortez\/","title":{"rendered":"Update: Head-on crash kills driver on U.S. Highway 491 north of Cortez"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"A
A head-on crash involving a tanker truck killed a person in a passenger vehicle Wednesday afternoon on U.S. Highway 491 north of Cortez, according to the Colorado State Patrol. The highway remains closed between Road S and Colorado Highway 184. (Jim Mimiaga\/The Journal)<\/span>Jim Mimiaga<\/span><\/figcaption><\/figure>\n<\/p>\n

One person died in a head-on crash involving a passenger car and a semitrailer Wednesday afternoon on U.S. Highway 491 south of the Lewis-Arriola school.<\/p>\n

The tanker truck caught fire, and a person in the Dodge Durango was killed, according to Master Trooper Gary Cutler of the Colorado State Patrol.<\/p>\n

Because of the severity of the fire, the driver was not identified, but was listed as \u201cJane Doe\u201d in the State Patrol incident report.<\/p>\n

The truck driver, identified as Paul M. Baker, 37, of Huntsville, Utah, was taken to Southwest Memorial Hospital.<\/p>\n

The crash occurred about 3 p.m. near mile marker 36, and closed the highway at the intersection of County Road S and at the intersection of Colorado Highway 184.<\/p>\n

\u201cThey both were fully engulfed in flames,\u201c said Cpl. Jonathan Silver, with the State Patrol. \u201dThe driver of the tanker was able to self-extricate before it trapped or burned him. The other vehicle, the driver was unable to get out and was burned.\u201c<\/p>\n

The tanker was empty, so it wasn\u2019t the cause of the blaze, Silver said. It had been hauling a corrosive material, but it wasn\u2019t fuel, he said.<\/p>\n

The highway is not expected to reopen for a few hours while the crash is investigated and cleaned up, said Montezuma County Sheriff Steve Nowlin.<\/p>\n

Sheriff deputies and Colorado Department of Transportation are stationed at the highway closures and directing traffic to detours.<\/p>\n

\"An
An empty tanker truck erupted in flames after a collision Wednesday on U.S. Highway 491 north of Cortez. (Shelly Griffin\/Special to The Journal)<\/span>Shelly Griffin\/Special to The Journal<\/span><\/figcaption><\/figure>\n<\/p>

Initial reports were that the semitrailer was northbound and the passenger vehicle was southbound.<\/p>\n

No further information was available about the cause of crash or the identity of the victim.<\/p>\n

The tanker truck was empty, Cutler said, but residue contributed to the fire, which created a plume of black smoke visible from miles away. The fire was extinguished by 3:30 p.m., he said.<\/p>\n

Shelly Griffin was on her way home to Lewis when she and her husband were stopped in traffic behind the crash.<\/p>\n

She was dismayed to see that vehicles were not pulling over to the side of the road for emergency vehicles.<\/p>\n

\u201cThey were forced to weave around them to get to the crash,\u201d she said.<\/p>\n

Griffin was on the side of the road a short distance from the crash. Amid the black billowing smoke and with a tanker fire nearby, the couple decided to turn around after a few minutes.<\/p>\n

\u201cIt is going to blow up,\u201d she thought.<\/p>\n

Firefighters from the Cortez and Lewis-Arriola fire districts, the Montezuma County Sheriff\u2019s Office and a Southwest Health System ambulance also responded to the scene.<\/p>\n

This article will be updated when more information becomes available.<\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Driver unable to escape burning Dodge Durango<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":43463,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[],"tags":[28],"naviga_topic":[],"class_list":["post-43571","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","tag-headlines"],"acf":[],"author_name":"Website Administrator","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/43571","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=43571"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/www.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/43571\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":85754,"href":"https:\/\/www.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/43571\/revisions\/85754"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/43463"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=43571"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=43571"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=43571"},{"taxonomy":"naviga_topic","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/naviga_topic?post=43571"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}